At 1:52 pm, while filming the terrain, the technician observed a strange object flying to the left over the ocean. Soon both men observed it with the naked eye. They noticed that the velocity and the altitude of the object appeared to be about the same as the helicopter, and estimated that the object was approximately 35 to 40 miles (55-65 km) away. It was traveling W/NW, according to the Captain. The technician aimed the camera at the object immediately and zoomed in with the infra red (IR) for better clarity.

While this seemed like a good fit just based on this overhead view, subsequent 3D analysis revealed that IB6830 (a four engined A340) is actually a perfect match. IB6830 left earlier, and was climbing out more to the south, nearer to the helicopter. At the time this was spotted (the very first sighting on the video, at 13:52:34) IB6830 was actually around 35 miles away. However it would very quickly get further away. By 13:57 IB6830 would be 65 miles away. This explain why it was not seen on radar (IB6830 was on radar, just not where they thought it was)

Initially I had to extract the data for the track from Planefinder, but then I located the FlightAware GPS track. Using this, multiple other examples of IB6830's departure, and the official departure charts, I was able to create a track in google earth using actual GPS coordinates (blue) and estimated positions (orange).

Since we have timestamped GPS locations, we can now geolocate IB6830 and LA330 in Google Earth, and create views of frames from the helicopter video using the coastline and mountains to get the exact heading.

IB6830 is in exactly the right position. We can position both the planes and the chopper precisely with the GPS data, match the camera direction from the wide shot, and the position of IB6830 then matches exactly.

The two large blobs are flared images from the heat of the engines (much smaller in reality). You can see this effect with some candles if you view them from a distance with an IR camera. I used the FLIR ONE to do this:
(Here's a video of the above experiment)

We can see how large the flares look at various stages of the path.

The flaring is more apparent if you look at it uninverted. The engines appear as two very bright lights

The aerodynamic contrail starts ands stop in a similar way to the trail in this video (not a "chemtrail" though, this just a regular aerodynamic contrail)

This is a close-up of the object early in the video:
This shows that the plane is banked at this point - i.e. it is turning to the right. This matches the part of the track for IB6830 where it turns to the north, based on the time.

Compare it with this video of a plane taking off. It is much closer, however at the end of the video you see the two engines tilted at about the same angle as the "UFO" while the plane turns right.

At one point (9:08) they switch between the IR camera and a regular (visible light) camera. you can see the trail qute distinctly. It looks very like a contrail.

Why is it showing up as warmer? Aerodynamic contrails are essentially clouds, and at this altitude they will be ice clouds, below below freezing. They show up as darkly colored for the same reason that other clouds in the scene show up dark. It's simply the camera adjusting the exposure for the very cold sky. The engines are small so they don't effect the exposure much (and hence they flare). So the net result is that anything warmer than radiation coming from clear sky will appear dark.

A few seconds later

It also seems a bit odd that there is very little change in the heading and elevation angles in the video. This becomes clear if you look at the angles and distances involved

The thin white lines here connect the chopper and the plane at equal times, as you can see the heading angle between them does not change much.

The altitude of the plane varies from ~5000m to 9000m, while the distance varies from 70km to 170km, the chopper is about 1400m, we can draw a diagram to see the angles

As you can see there is very little change from the start (2.93°) to the end (1.94). Basically it should vary from about 3° to about 2° (appearing to be descending faster at the start)

[Note: this top post will be updated with information from the discussion below, so some of what follows may seem repetitive]

The helicopter seems to have tried to call on 121.5. The are a couple of problems with that, Most aircraft don't set that frequency until some time after takeoff which can vary from airline to airline, and if they were listening, unless whoever was calling used their callsign, they wouldn't respond.

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Q: Why did it not show up on radar?
They were looking for a low flying object south of the airport about 35 miles away, by the time they looked it was at a high altitude and 65 miles away. The plane actually does show up on radar in data supplied by CEFAA

Q:How can it be a contrail cloud if it's as hot as the engine?
A: It's not as hot as the engines, it's a similar color in the IR to other clouds in the images. It's just a dense cloud which is a lot warmer than the far background sky. Even if they were dumping boiling water it would have been atomized by the 300 mph wind into a cloud and cooled to ambient temperature in seconds.

Q: Don't contrails only form above 30,000 feet?
A: That's where exhaust contrails are most frequent. However this appear to be a semi persistent aerodynamic contrail which often form on climbing aircraft between 20,000 to 30,000 feet (and sometimes lower).

Q: Why should we trust your theory over the experts?
A: I could argue I'm an expert too (at identifying planes and contrails), or that the CEFAA lacks expertise in some areas, or that even experts make mistakes. However let's drop that "Argument for authority", and look at facts you can verify yourself.

We have some very solid verifiable evidence in

The helicopter video with timestamps and GPS coordinates.

The IB6830 and LA330 ADS-B tracks with timestamps and GPS coordinates.

1 matches 2 in every way

IB6830 is in the right place at the right place

IB6830 is going in the right direction

IB6830 banks when the "UFO" banks,

IB6830 would create a visual thermal signature the same size as in the video.

IB6830 engine configuration matches the flares seen in the banking

The size of IB6830's thermal signature shrinks proportional to its distance, matching the video.

Contrails derived from the IB6830's track would have the same apparent size as in the video.

This is not my theory. These are verifiable facts that I (and others) simply discovered. Unless there was a UFO flying between the plane and the helicopter, mimicking the motion, the banking, the size and and the thermal signature of the plane, then it's a plane.

Why is it showing up as warmer? Aerodynamic contrails can form in air is that is water saturated, but in which no clouds have yet formed. The drop in pressure increases the relative humidity enough for a water condensation cloud to form. This can also freeze if the temperature is cold enough.

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Condensation in itself releases heat, although I don't know if that would show up like this in an IR-camera. Also the water (vapour) might reflect more IR-radiation than the surrounding thin clouds that appear to be there. Just speculating...

Condensation in itself releases heat, although I don't know if that would show up like this in an IR-camera. Also the water (vapour) might reflect more IR-radiation than the surrounding thin clouds that appear to be there. Just speculating...

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I considered both of those. With the latent heat of condensation, it's the surrounding air that warms up, not the water droplets. And air itself is generally not visible on IR. If the hot exhaust is not visible, then ar warmed by condensation is not going to be.

Reflection is much more plausible. in this image:
The clouds in the background and foreground is also darker. So maybe something to do with the clouds reflecting the heat of the land.

The footage is dated 11 November 2014 at 1400 local time (UTC-3). The coordinates are here:

The heading on the footage seems to indicate that the view was slightly east of north (010 degrees) although it looks more like northeast based on the curve of coastline visible here, which seems to match the large bay heading round towards San Antonio:

There was a plane that had recently taken off from Santiago and was heading northwards at that time (screenshot is at 1700UTC / 1400 local time)

It looks much too far away (over 140 miles) if the times are accurate on both the footage and the playback, but without knowing the level of zoom involved in the helicopter footage it is hard to say. I doubt that the observer would be out on the distance by a factor of three or four, though.

There was also a slightly later flight climbing out of Santiago on a more westerly track which would have been about 60 miles away in the right direction at 1415 local time. That is not much further than the officer's estimate of "approximately 35 to 40 miles (55-65 km) away", and heading NW which also matches his description:

We still have the problem of the time not matching, though. That flight had not taken off by 1:52pm, when the UFO was first observed, assuming the Planefinder playback is correct.

However, it looks as if that is a fairly standard departure route out of Santiago, with a southerly takeoff and then a turn to the northwest, so it's possible there could have been an earlier untracked flight which would have been in the right place at the right time to match the UFO.

EDIT: see post below. I had a filter set on the Planefinder site so not all flights were visible. There was in fact a flight that seems to fit the video very well.

Conclusion The object observed in the video was most probably a medium-haul twin jet airliner in a landing phase, flying ahead of the helicopter at a higher velocity, with a low altitude and a low velocity, in view of landing. One possible sketch of its route is the following:

The “white oval” effect was quite possibly due to halation through the atmosphere, mainly from illumination of a white fuselage roof. The pilot, perhaps not being aware of quite how far away the target was, could be subject to this illusion. The effluent trail observed on two occasions probably results from dumping some cabin waste water, forming a plume oriented along the local wind blowing from the west.

The object observed in the video was most probably a medium-haul twin jet airliner in a landing phase, flying ahead of the helicopter at a higher velocity, with a low altitude and a low velocity, in view of landing. One possible sketch of its route is the following:

Content from external source

I compared the proposed track of a hypothetical medium-haul twin jet airliner in a landing phase with the planefinder.net flight path of an actual long-haul airliner that took off from the Santiago Airport a few minutes earlier:
A part of it, which was not tracked and replaced with dashed line, might actually coincide with the deduced path of the "UFO". It also seems possible that the two out of A340 four engines (on one side) were blocked from the camera view by the plane body with one of them occasionally pocking out and seen as a third hot spot:

It also seems possible that the two out of A340 four engines (on one side) were blocked from the camera view by the plane body with one of them occasionally pocking out and seen as a third hot spot:

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Kind of shoehorning it in, but that does kind of fit with a full-wing aerodynamic contrail.

However I think that's possibly misleading, as the trail would be thicker close to the plane in an actual aerodynamic contrail. And really the angle of the fuselage would match the angle of the trail. More like:

Especially when the trail is still attached to the plane. The engines appear much bigger than they actually are because they are so hot and flare in the FLIR footage.

The flaring is more apparent if you look at it uninverted. The engines appear as two very bright lights

Also it seems unlikely that the other two engines would remain hidden when the plane was banking.

The object observed in the video was most probably a medium-haul twin jet airliner in a landing phase, flying ahead of the helicopter at a higher velocity, with a low altitude and a low velocity, in view of landing. One possible sketch of its route is the following:

Content from external source

I compared the proposed track of a hypothetical medium-haul twin jet airliner in a landing phase with the planefinder.net flight path of an actual long-haul airliner that took off from the Santiago Airport a few minutes earlier:
A part of it, which was not tracked and replaced with dashed line, might actually coincide with the deduced path of the "UFO". It also seems possible that the two out of A340 four engines (on one side) were blocked from the camera view by the plane body with one of them occasionally pocking out and seen as a third hot spot:

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I was wondering why I hadn't seen that flight on Planefinder, and of course it was a rookie error, I still had an altitude filter set!

IMHO though it is a different flight that has perfect timing for the helicopter video at 1700 UTC:

This is a twin-engined plane, an A320.

The helicopter video momentarily shows a zoomed out view:

I'm assuming that the crosshairs here show the area that is being zoomed in on in the close-up shots.

I used Google Earth to place a polygon at the location and altitude of the plane at 1700UTC. It looks like quite a good match when viewed from the helicopter location:

Just refining that a bit to match the stated altitude of the helicopter which is 4356ft (1383m)

Compare to:

As for the timing, the first tracking on Planefinder is at 1654UTC, at a height of 5,250ft. The helicopter crew first saw the plane at 1652UTC, when it would probably have only just taken off. I think the timings are just about compatible, though, if they saw the plane quite low at first. It might even be possible that the first object they saw was the earlier flight, IB6830, and then they picked up the later flight as they flew up the coast. They don't seem to keep sight of the object continuously, at least as far as the full video footage shows.

Attached Files:

Just to verify the accuracy of the helicopter coordinates, the coordinates are south and west, so are both negative, so:

Can be entered into Google Earth as
-34 05 13, -71 54 33

Which translates as:
-34.086766960°
-71.908855250°

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Just to note that my screenshot above was taken using the co-ordinates of the YouTube clip at 14:00 local time, by which time the helicopter had travelled quite a distance northwards up the coast.

Another point in favour of the plane hypothesis: when it is first spotted on the camera it appears to be at an angle, consistent with the plane banking to the right, which is what flight LA330 did almost as soon as it took off. (Edit: I see Mick already mentioned this in post #8)

Conclusion The object observed in the video was most probably a medium-haul twin jet airliner in a landing phase, flying ahead of the helicopter at a higher velocity, with a low altitude and a low velocity, in view of landing. One possible sketch of its route is the following:

The “white oval” effect was quite possibly due to halation through the atmosphere, mainly from illumination of a white fuselage roof. The pilot, perhaps not being aware of quite how far away the target was, could be subject to this illusion. The effluent trail observed on two occasions probably results from dumping some cabin waste water, forming a plume oriented along the local wind blowing from the west.

Content from external source

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This appears to be the analysis from some French Analysts which according to one source I found was rejected by the CEFAA as Santiago ATC couldn;t find a radar return for an object at that distance.

Developed and produced by Sagem, the Euroflir 350 and 410 are high-performance, gyrostabilized optronic observation systems for airborne applications (helicopters, drones, maritime patrol and surveillance aircraft, etc.). The Euroflir 350 was already selected as part of the modernization package for the French army’s AS532 Cougar helicopters.

L-3 Communications WESCAM (L-3 WESCAM), a wholly owned subsidiary of L-3 Communications, announced today that it has been selected by the Chilean Navy to provide an MX-15 electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) imaging turret for the SH-32 Cougar airframe. System delivery will take place in 2006, followed by an in-country installation by Enaer, a Chilean Air Force Company. - See more at: https://www.verticalmag.com/press-r...t-for-chilean-navy-html/#sthash.MvJu1Rpm.dpuf

Developed and produced by Sagem, the Euroflir 350 and 410 are high-performance, gyrostabilized optronic observation systems for airborne applications (helicopters, drones, maritime patrol and surveillance aircraft, etc.). The Euroflir 350 was already selected as part of the modernization package for the French army’s AS532 Cougar helicopters.

L-3 Communications WESCAM (L-3 WESCAM), a wholly owned subsidiary of L-3 Communications, announced today that it has been selected by the Chilean Navy to provide an MX-15 electro-optical and infrared (EO/IR) imaging turret for the SH-32 Cougar airframe. System delivery will take place in 2006, followed by an in-country installation by Enaer, a Chilean Air Force Company. - See more at: https://www.verticalmag.com/press-r...t-for-chilean-navy-html/#sthash.MvJu1Rpm.dpuf

Content from external source

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I will let someone else do all the hard work based on the new information. you know, all those calculations and stuff.

I'm assuming that the crosshairs here show the area that is being zoomed in on in the close-up shots.

I used Google Earth to place a polygon at the location and altitude of the plane at 1700UTC. It looks like quite a good match when viewed from the helicopter location:

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The crosshairs do show the area zoomed in. There's a sequence of three shots around 14:00:20 at three zoom levels here you can overlay the visible and the IR to see some wider cloud structure, which matches what you can see around the crosshairs

Your polygon seems to be a perfect match for altitude. This demonstrates that the initial Navy estimate of the altitude being the same was way off , as that's 16,000 feet there.

The two of note are
["-33.0209","-71.1621","20575","399.7","1415725299"], (14:01:39)
and
["-33.1227","-71.1225","18575","392.4","1415725242"] (14:00:42)

With just the 14:01 data point highlighted:

The 14:01:39 data point is an almost exact match. It's also at 20,575 feet, which is a very plausible altitude for persistent aerodynamic contrails. Similar to altitudes I see them form at for planes climbing out of San Francisco, climbing over Sacramento.

However it's moving directly away from the camera, so would not leave a diagonal trail (I don't think wind would account for the difference).

I think it's more likely the clock was off by a minute or so. I looked at the raw Planefinder data for LA330:

The two of note are
["-33.0209","-71.1621","20575","399.7","1415725299"], (14:01:39)
and
["-33.1227","-71.1225","18575","392.4","1415725242"] (14:00:42)

The 14:01:39 data point is an almost exact match. It's also at 20,575 feet, which is a very plausible altitude for persistent aerodynamic contrails. Similar to altitudes I see them form at for planes climbing out of San Francisco, climbing over Sacramento.

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It looks like I missed a lot of fruitful investigation while outing for the most of the afternoon. I agree that LA330 is the most likely culprit. I also think that an aerodynamic contrail is a likely explanation of the trail. There is one thing remains to demonstrate - such a contrail can reflect infrared radiation (from the engines). This would explain the presence of a brighter spot inside the trail.

There is one thing remains to demonstrate - such a contrail can reflect infrared radiation (from the engines). This would explain the presence of a brighter spot inside the trail.

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I don't think it's reflecting from the engines except when it's very close to the plane. I think it just becomes a dense cloud, and appears black much the way the other clouds in the shot do. It's just denser, hence "brighter" in the IR spectrum.

If there were two flights, could it also be that the IB6830 trail was an exhaust contrail? I think there may be some evidence for that.

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It trails from 14:00:06 to 14:00:40. According to the track (which is quite detailed at that point) that going between 8155m (26,755 feet) and 8828m (28,963.25). This is certainly getting towards a more typical exhaust contrail altitude.

The second trail starts at 14:01:35. This has LA330 at 6246m (20,492 ft).

If there were two flights, could it also be that the IB6830 trail was an exhaust contrail? I think there may be some evidence for that.

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It trails from 14:00:06 to 14:00:40. According to the track (which is quite detailed at that point) that going between 8155m (26,755 feet) and 8828m (28,963.25). This is certainly getting towards a more typical exhaust contrail altitude.

The second trail starts at 14:01:35. This has LA330 at 6246m (20,492 ft).

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The trails have evolved differently.

In the first trail, there was a brighter (denser) spot formed in the middle that remained in the same place:

It's certainly plausible. The first trail does also look more like the "two tubes" of an A340 contrail after the initial merge. A340's don't have the bulge that 747s have (and to a lesser extent a380s).

The IB6830 flight has a big chunk missing from the climbing turn. We can make a pretty good guess where this might be, and from that find the distance at the first sighting:
This is about 35 miles, which is what the original estimates were.

We can verify that it must have been flying a wider curve (besides the obvious impossibility of instant turns) by looking at the speed of the plane as derived from the positions. Here using the "Elevation Profile" in Google Earth

Notice that in the straight portion (indicated by the red arrow, and the marked line in the profile) the calculated velocity drops very low. Hence it must actually be flying a longer path.

It trails from 14:00:06 to 14:00:40. According to the track (which is quite detailed at that point) that going between 8155m (26,755 feet) and 8828m (28,963.25). This is certainly getting towards a more typical exhaust contrail altitude.

The second trail starts at 14:01:35. This has LA330 at 6246m (20,492 ft).

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You guys are losing me here... The helicopter crew were mistaken about the altitude of the (not one, but) two planes they were tracking by (22,255 feet) and (15,992 feet)- both altitudes well above cloud base at 10,000 feet. One plane was landing, one was taking off. The clock was off by a minute or two...

Chilean experts studied this for two years, but it never occurred to them to check the flight data from the air traffic that day, so they missed these two planes....

If someone was putting forth a UFO theory with this sort of "evidence" what would you say to them?

"On November 11, 2014, a Chilean Navy helicopter (Airbus Cougar AS-532) was on a routine daytime patrol mission flying north along the coast, west of Santiago. On board were the pilot, a Navy Captain with many years of flying experience, and a Navy technician who was testing a WESCAM’s MX-15 HD Forward Looking Infra Red (FLIR) camera, used most often for “medium-altitude covert intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance,” according to the product website. The aircraft was flying at an altitude of approximately 4,500 feet on a clear afternoon with unlimited horizontal visibility, and the air temperature at that height was 50 degrees F (10 C). There was a cloud base above at 10,000 feet, and a layer of stratuscumulos clouds below. The helicopter was flying at about 132 knots, or 152 mph."

You guys are losing me here... The helicopter crew were mistaken about the altitude of the (not one, but) two planes they were tracking by (22,255 feet) and (15,992 feet)- both altitudes well above cloud base at 10,000 feet. One plane was landing, one was taking off. The clock was off by a minute or two...

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The planes were actually there though. Exactly where they saw them, as far as I can tell. The clock being off by a minute was a problematic necessity to explain why the single plane did not exactly line up. Once I realized there were (probably) two different planes the timestamps all suddenly fell into place.

The aircraft was flying at an altitude of approximately 4,500 feet on a clear afternoon with unlimited horizontal visibility, and the air temperature at that height was 50 degrees F (10 C). There was a cloud base above at 10,000 feet, and a layer of stratuscumulos clouds below.

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Unlimited horizontal visibility. So they could see things 30-60 miles away, where the cloud cover was different - in fact it appears to be blue skies:

Chilean experts studied this for two years, but it never occurred to them to check the flight data from the air traffic that day, so they missed these two planes...

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That mystifies me too. It was the first thing several users here, including me, thought to do, and it quickly became clear that there was not one but two aircraft in the right location, and flying on the right heading, to match what appears in the helicopter video.

If the UFO wasn't one of these planes, then both of them must have passed rather close to it. In which case it seems strange that apparently nobody on board the planes saw anything unusual.

You guys are losing me here... The helicopter crew were mistaken about the altitude of the (not one, but) two planes they were tracking by (22,255 feet) and (15,992 feet)- both altitudes well above cloud base at 10,000 feet. One plane was landing, one was taking off. The clock was off by a minute or two...

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No, both planes were taking off. They say they first saw the object at 1652UTC, so it would have been lower at that time.
"Cloud base" doesn't mean there is cloud everywhere at that height, it just indicates the height of the base of the clouds that are there: it tells you that the air should be clear below that height but won't necessarily be clear above it. It doesn't tell you anything about the actual amount of cloud, other than it's not zero.

I do however think it is very unlikely that the clock was inaccurate. The camera display shows live GPS co-ordinates as well as the time, and GPS equipment obtains precise time information from the satellites as a matter of course (for obvious reasons!) There seems to be no reason to have a user-settable, and thus potentially inaccurate, clock on the system as well.

That mystifies me too. It was the first thing several users here, including me, thought to do, and it quickly became clear that there was not one but two aircraft in the right location, and flying on the right heading, to match what appears in the helicopter video.

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That did not mystify me. Most people tend to greatly underestimate the distances to and altitudes of high flying aircraft and their contrails, whereas the Metabunk users have acquired a considerable experience of dealing with this kind of observations.

The Chilean experts did a good analysis of the video to extract all relevant information on the distance to and speed of the "UFO", but there were a few assumptions taken for granted. Arguably, the most crucial of them was the assumption of one and the same object, resulting in a significantly lower speed and closer distance than those of the actual flights.

That did not mystify me. Most people tend to greatly underestimate the distances to and altitudes of high flying aircraft and their contrails, whereas the Metabunk users have acquired a considerable experience of dealing with this kind of observations.

The Chilean experts did a good analysis of the video to extract all relevant information on the distance to and speed of the "UFO", but there were a few assumptions taken for granted. Arguably, the most crucial of them was the assumption of one and the same object, resulting in a significantly lower speed and closer distance than those of the actual flights.

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It looks like they also used the altitude data from the FLIR camera (pg. 9 of the French report).

Also, this sort of camera must be used all the time by various organizations around the world (the Chilean crew included) has anyone seen similar footage from another source? Did those guys go back to work and go, "oh man, check it out, we thought that was a yoofoe the other day, but really it was just an airplane- look there is another one."